Bill Clinton beat Bush the Elder with the title of this thread as his mantra. Latest polling shows that the economy is far and away the greatest concern for the American electorate. The events discussed in other threads here re the financial meltdown etc. and what is now in the news cycle (likely for a long time to come)have even forced the coverage of the campaigns and the candidates themselves to focus on real issues. Sarah Palin is no longer the lead story.

Anyway, all that was to ask one question or two. With the financial turmoil and peoples worries, is John McCain in big, big trouble? And will it take major news, concerns in the terrorist/Iraq/Afghanistan fronts to turn it around?

A bunch of polls have come and put the campaign in doubt to a point. A few polls show Pennsylvania and Ohio tied or have one or the other put by 1%. However, a few polls now show Virginia, Indiana, New Mexico and Colorado all in Obama's corner which my offset an Ohio and Pennsylvania win.

You also have McCain stating he would fire the SEC chairman. Of course, McCain kinda bit off more then he could chew when the SEC chair fired back at him and on a day when Wall Street rallied. I do think the economy issue is Obama's key to win as long as he has some good solid plans and no talk. We are getting past the point of talking in the campaign and now is the time for real plans. So far, Obama's tax plan is getting good reviews from independent reviewers. Yet, he has to come out showing he has a real plan to help the economy. Conservative talk shows and Fox News will take it to task if its not beyond great.

The real problem for McCain is that he has so many gaffs in this issue that I do think he is in trouble of not having a real plan. The Republicans are great and destroying Liberal economic plans, but this time around McCain maybe the one that is real trouble of getting battered around the regular networks and a media that is sensing that blood in the water.

I do think the economy issue is Obama's key to win as long as he has some good solid plans and no talk. We are getting past the point of talking in the campaign and now is the time for real plans. So far, Obama's tax plan is getting good reviews from independent reviewers. Yet, he has to come out showing he has a real plan to help the economy. Conservative talk shows and Fox News will take it to task if its not beyond great.

Conservative talk shows and Fox News would criticize Obama's plans even if he somehow found a machine that could turn dog crap into gold. ("Senator Obama apparently is too much of an elitist to use a pooper-scooper like everyone else!") I'm not sure why the onus is necessarily on Obama to come up with a fantastic plan, especially since McCain's plans all look like Bush's plans, which have proven to be total failures. Hopefully Americans finally realize that the trickle-down effect is just a con job.

“How is it that I am a good actor? What I do is I... pretend to be the person I’m portraying. You’re confused. Case in point: in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson comes to me and says ‘I would like you to be Gandalf the Wizard,’ and I said ‘You are aware that I am not really a wizard?’ and Peter Jackson said ‘I would like you to use your acting skills to portray a wizard for the duration of the show.’ So I said ‘Okay’ and then I said to myself ‘Mmm.. How do I do that?’ And this is what I did: I imagined that I was a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted, in that way on the stage. How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me where to stand." -- Sir Ian McKellen, Extras

Actually, its off their news portion. That site no longer has a political forum. I don't think the site is that bad, I mean at least they have a news section.

Its all about coverage and rumors about the plans. So, the conservative shows will have to go out of their way to bash Obama's plan. That being said McCain's so weak on the economy, his plan is probably the one that will be more scrutinzed by the mainstream media. Its the opening that Obama may get that Kerry and Gore did not have the last two times.